A printed wired board or printed circuit board like some call it, prior to assume the appearances commonly known by the public, starts his production process as a panel, copper cladded on one or two sides, of dielectric material. The copper thickness can range from 15 um up to 35 um, and the dielectric thickness from 25 um up to 5 mm. This panel must go through many operations or technologies which determine the kind of printed wired board.
To mention the most important they are: Drilling of the holes which at a finished product will be used to insert electronic components, electroless and electrolitic plating, photographic development, chemical milling, photo resist exposure, silkscreen printing, lacquer stripping, tin lead, gold, silver, rodhium, nikel, copper plating, hot air drying, and water rinse after each station, usually done by dipping or spraying. Contrary to this repeated rinsing stations, the new rack permits the construction of one movable water rinse station, which travels alongside the fixed process tanks, and through the spray nozzel pipes later in the description shown, likewise for the anodes, it inserts a magazine, or more, of panels between the spaces of the said anodes or said nozzels, rinsing them or whatever other operation is required.
The quality of the printed wired board is greatly increased considering that the panels are not handled between each operation and no sticky residues coming from contaminated developing, etching, stripping machines can damage the surface of the panels and their holes.
These operations are performed while the panels are suspended in the air, facing anodes or spray nozzels, vertically, through the whole process, except the lamination which is not a part of the invention.
It must be acknowledged that each panel contains one or more image, stepped up, of the printed circuit board, by which the total size and weigth of the panels increases considerably.
In the figures that follow this description, it has been shown also a version of the tool used in a full automated production line, together with a loading device used at beginning of each cycle.
As in the past, today the most popular rack used for the fabrication of printed wired board is the spine rack type shown in FIG. 5. On this rack a thumb screw provides both, electrical contact and mechanical support. This spine rack is included in the application to show the importance of having a secure tool of production. The certainty of having good mechanical hold and good electrical contact, is believed in the industry to lay with the positive pressure of a screw.